Narayana Peesapaty created edible spoons in Hyderabad, India, because he is fed up with plastic waste.

Non-recycled waste is filling our landfills and contaminating the earth and its wildlife populations. Plastic utensils have cancerous properties to begin with that can end up in people’s food in small amounts. The average time for one plastic bottle to decompose is 450 years.

India is in the region of South Asia where it is culturally common to eat traditional meals with your hands, even among the wealthy who can trace the practice back to Ayurvedic teaching—and yet every year Indians use 120 billion pieces of plastic cutlery.

A study published in the journal Science says eight of the top 10 plastic polluting nations are also in Asia, with China, Indonesia and Philippines being the worst.

Waste production is particularly problematic in large cities whose economic development precedes waste management infrastructure. China is an example of one of the world’s most densely populated regions that has come to create the world’s largest economy, though their record-breaking growth amounts to unprecedented pollution.

The Macao International Environmental Co-Operation Forum & Exhibition (MIECF) takes place 31 March- 2 April in China. Worldwide experts like Torben Kristiansen from Denmark—where less than four per cent of all waste is sent to the landfill—will discuss how Asia can achieve environmental sustainability. Northern Europe models that near zero waste is not an impossible ideal.

Kristiansen tells Eco-Business.com that instead of fixating on technology, countries should focus on perfecting organisational details like logistics, regulations, financial mechanisms such as investments and taxes, and enforcement measures.

Singapore is another innovative city in Asia where concern is amounting for their plastic waste. In 2014, 9% of Singapore’s waste got recycled. The region’s largest developer,
CapitaLand, urges people to “say NO to disposable cutlery.” CapitaLand points out that individual efforts amount to meaningful change; if one person on the Island throws away a single pair of disposable utensils each week, then 104 utensils are disposed annually- and if everyone on the Island does this then around 500,000,000 utensils are disposed each year.

The individual efforts that CapitaLand encourages is something that the earth demands from all of us now. Statistics from the World Economic Forum cite that global plastic production has grown from 15 million tons in 1964 to 311 million tons in 2014- a number that is expected to triple by 2050, unless some sort of radical change takes place.

Peesapaty’s utensils should hasten that change. He began his business, Bakeys, in 2011, though it is gaining larger attention today because the business is crowd-funding with The Better India video to make money for investment in chopsticks and forks.

The edible cutlery is a bio-degradable option that has a shelf life of three years and decomposes within four-five days if not used. They even come in three different flavors to suit the food that they are served with: plain, sweet, or spicy.

Bakeys Goals. (Photo credit: Sarah Munir- Kickstarter).

“The cutlery is tasty, fun, nutritious, and environmentally friendly” says Peesapaty, who also says he became motivated realizing people want to do the right thing, they just don't know how. He makes the utensils by blending millet, rice, and wheat flours that are then baked dry.

Peesapaty primarily uses millet because it requires 60 times less water to cultivate. He cites that 500 liters of water is needed to produce just one kilo of rice. The International Fund for Agricultural Development estimates rather that around 1000- 3000 liters of water produces a single grain of rice.

Change in plastic consumption across Asia is also developing institutionally. In 2015, Kathamanda in Nepal, Uttar Pradesh in India and Malacca in Malaysia banned using plastic bags. Cities such as Singapore, where citizens are charged for eating or drinking on the public transit, and drinks and snacks come with discardable plastic bags for this purpose (straws, and utensils, too) could benefit from following suit. Singapore’s NTUC FairPrice saw a record 10.1 million plastic bags saved in 2015 through its bring-your-own-bag initiative.

Singapore’s NTUC FairPrice saw a record 10.1 million plastic bags saved in 2015 through its bring-your-own-bag initiative. (Photo credit: AP).

Change-makers may be outnumbered, but this too is changing. Peesapaty is not alone; Ari Jónsson in Iceland was motivated from a Japanese discovery to create a green alternative to plastic this year, too. He invented biodegradable algae water bottles using powdered agar with water. Agar is a substance that dates to the 1650s when a Japanese innkeeper tossed out extra soup and saw it gel together. The agar-water mixture forms a gelatinous substance that can be heated then frozen into a mould hard enough to contain water but soluble to break-down once emptied.

As Asian cities make money as popular global innovators, there is no need to create more waste—people can be inspired in Peesapaty’s case to build a business out of their compassion for the earth and fellow peers who also inhabit it. While much of Asia faces stark environmental degradation, attention is being turned towards igniting change, and India’s edible cutlery is just one man’s invention that if used by fellow citizens may amount to powerful good.